


A+X

by Keyblader078



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24859189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keyblader078/pseuds/Keyblader078
Summary: Taking place in an alternate MCU where the defeat of Thanos left most of the Avengers dead or missing something has appeared to take the place of those heroes. Mutants have started to appear in the world. To keep up Charles Xavier has created his School for Gifted Youngsters but it is not just a high school as mutants are appearing at many ages. This story follows an original character who is dropped into a new team of X-Men and faces a new world of challenges.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written before Endgame came out but I think it still works. It'll be updated periodically. Some MCU characters will show up eventually as will a villain.

New York always has the cool things happen. I mean sure, when aliens invaded a few years back and destroyed half the city that was scary as hell, but stuff like that never seems to happen where I’m from. We don’t get to see the Avengers. We don’t have groups of super powered vigilantes roaming the streets, usually. There was that one time in high school where Tony Stark came through the town accidentally, he got lost on his way to an expo in Chicago. But, Greensborough Michigan was your average small Midwestern town. Close knit community, a few families that have been there forever running the place, their kids being jerks about it, and more churches than seemed reasonable for a town that size. There was a time when I thought it would be cool to have a superhero in the town I lived in. Then the Terrigan Mist happened. Inhumans popped up everywhere, and some people died. One kid in my school got powers, a lot of kids died. So, that really got stuff moving, people started protesting, and then the Avengers had their whole fight. I am a fan of them, so watching them fight wasn’t the coolest thing...okay it was. It was really cool. But that happened in a major city. I guess my point is, why are there always super powered people in major cities, but especially New York. Is it just a matter of population density? Are there more people, so just statistically more powered people? Do centers of power in the world attract powered people? I think there is something to be said about the safety of small towns in a world where there are people who can call lightning from the sky and climb up walls, even if they are really cool and keep the world safe from aliens. 

I sighed heavily and leaned back in my desk chair. My neighbors were playing music really loudly and screaming. I could hear the clink of bottles as well, though I was guessing that was going to last about a half hour before the RA put a stop to that. Talking about this stuff in college was interesting. I was going to the pretty large state college in Michigan, and as such most of the people I met were not from small towns. In fact most of them didn’t even know where I grew up. I was fine with that, I wasn’t filled with some pride of being from small rural America, not that I looked down on those who are. I just got sick of telling people where I was from. 

The essay I was finishing up was for a class that focused on the history of powered individuals, and their effect on society. There were a few people in class who were very anti-powered folks. Which I totally get, we actually had a girl who grew up in Sokovia in the class, she was not a fan of the Avengers. But that’s fine, because most of them were gone. There was apparently a huge fight somewhere, and Iron Man, Captain America, Vision, and most of them were gone. As far as I knew, nobody was really sure where they went, but the world was pretty much safe, kinda. One of the things that we talked about in class in the first few weeks was that the existence of these heroes is what brought out the crazy powered people. Another is that they occupy a certain space in the sort of food chain of the world, and with the Avengers pretty much gone, there were some people who thought that the void left by them would be filled by something, and it was only a matter time before something appeared and changed the world again. 

But, I wasn’t really concerned about that at the moment, I was thinking about a stupid argument that I used to have with people when I said that I wanted to leave my hometown for the big city. So, here I was, the freshman in college in a world post-Avengers. There was a knock on the door to my dorm room.  
“It’s open,” I called. “You can come in.” 

A tall guy with dark brown eyes and short curly brown hair opened the door. He was wearing a flannel shirt buttoned up for the most part. “ Are you done with the paper?”

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s it? That’s all you wanted to know?”

He came in and pulled my roommates desk chair up next to my desk. “Well, yeah. Because if you’re done we can get everyone together to watch The Last Jedi!” 

I sighed and looked at the open document on my computer. It was done, technically. In high school I had this habit of not editing my papers after I wrote them, or having anyone look at them to help. I’d coasted on my talent of writing pretty well. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t keep that up once I went to college. That didn’t happen. I did a quick read through, gave it the good enough stamp, and sent it into my professor. “Yes,” I said happily. “Let’s watch the movie.”

I followed him out of my room, but didn’t make it down the hall. About halfway there I started to feel weird. It was getting really hot, like really hot. I felt myself start to sweat for no reason. Everyone else was wearing heavy clothes, flannels, sweatshirts, stuff like that. I felt like I wanted to strip down to my underwear because it would make me more comfortable. My friend turned around and gave me a quizzical look. “Tom?” 

I opened my mouth...and collapsed to the ground.

When I came to I wasn’t in a hospital, not one that I really understood. It looked way more high tech than I thought was possible, for the public to see. SHIELD was back, so I guessed that there was a relation there. Why I was in a SHIELD hospital I wasn’t quite sure.  
Easy, Tom, I told myself. You just had a weird episode. You’re fine.

A doctor entered the room. She was short, but had friendly eyes. There were dark bags under her eyes, and at the moment she looked like she was at the end of a long shift.

“Ah,” she said. In contrast to her tired face her voice was cheery. “You’re up, that’s great.” She started the usual checks, shining a pen light in my eye, taking my blood pressure, stuff like that. “How are you feeling now?”

“Um,” I said as she checked my pulse. “Confused. What happened?”

“You fainted,” the doctor said curtly. “Is that normal?”

“I have had a history of episodes like this,” I said. “But I’ve been taking medication for a while and that’s cut down on them.”

“Good good,” she muttered. She wrote some stuff down. “Open your mouth.” I did and she stuck a thermometer in there pretty unceremoniously. After a second she looked at it and frowned. “I’ll be damned.”

“What?” I asked. My heart was starting to race. I could feel...something...something inside me. It was building up again. There was a feeling of rising temperature. The same thing that happened right before I passed out before. “What’s happening with me?”

“Mr. Tanner,” she said. “Your temperature is nearly 200 degrees.” I blinked. “That is nearly 90 degrees over fatal.” She flashed me a smile, but it vanished quickly. “But here you are.”

“That’s...insane,” I said slowly.

“We will need a blood sample,” the doctor said. “To make sure everything is alright.” I took a deep breath, needles were not my favorite thing in the world. They were, in fact, close to my least favorite thing in the world. I nodded as she drew my blood. I made sure not to look at the needle. Once she was done she left the room. She didn’t say that she would be back soon, she didn’t say anything. 

The warm feeling didn’t go away. Not warm like happy, warm like I was getting too hot. This time, however. I wasn’t sweating. I didn’t feel light headed or anything like the last time. It almost felt...good. I looked down at my hands. They were normal. My palms looked a little sweaty, or clammy, I honestly don’t know the difference. And then I noticed something. There was smoke rising from my fingertips. Not black smoke, like smoke signal smoke, just white smoke. “No, way…”

I waited for a few minutes, but the doctor didn’t come back. After sighing, I took my phone out of my pocket and started scrolling through the news. One headline caught my eye.

Powered individuals appearing across the nation, Seemingly no event to act as a catalyst. 

We all know that powers don’t come from nowhere. They come from tech, or from genetic manipulation. Nobody is born with their powers...right? I read the article quickly, it was just a short report about how across the country there were several instances of teens and young adults manifesting superpowers suddenly. I looked around the room for a moment. The smoke was starting to get into my nose, and it had a pleasant campfire smell for some reason. I scrolled through some more news and finally came upon what looked like an excerpt from a paper written by someone named…

“Charles Xavier,” I whispered. “Who...why does that sound familiar?” I decided to take a look at the paper. It was really technical, and even though I was in college I wasn’t in a science program. I was studying to be a journalist or an editor or something like that. One thing that I did notice right away was that this guy, Xavier, was really good at writing. His grammar was excellent, the paper was easy enough to read, whether or not you could actually understand what he was trying to say. What I managed to get from it was that during his time in academia, or at some point he didn’t say exactly when, Xavier had discovered something he called the X-Gene, or at least theorized that humans had it. People with that gene were born with the potential to have super powers.The powers usually manifested during times of stress, but sometimes they would just appear randomly, and usually during adolescence. 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I muttered to myself. “I’m an adult, and I wasn’t under any sort of significant stress.” I looked at my hand that wasn’t holding the phone. It was normal. The warm feeling that had spread through my body was gone as well. I looked at the door to the room, it was closed. “Fire.” Nothing happened. Don’t know what I expected if I was being honest. “Okay. Let’s try…” I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, there was a small fire in the palm of my hand. 

The door opened again. But this time, a bald man in a wheelchair came in. He smiled at me.  
“Mr. Tanner, how do you do?” he said. 

“Um…” I said a little confused. “Hi, how do you know who I am?”

“The doctor called me,” he said. “I have friends in the medical community. With so many of us appearing these days I need to get Ceribro working again.”

“That doesn’t really help me,” I said. I stood up. “If you could please get out of my way I have class.”

“Mr. Tanner,” Xavier said. “I came here because you have the X-Gene. You are a mutant.” That’s when my hands lit on fire. “See? There you are.”

I looked at my hands. “Holy crap!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom learns more about this whole new world.

Leaving that doctor’s office was the weirdest thing I had ever done up to that point. The doctor came back, with my parents, and then left again. Xavier introduced himself and started explaining what was happening. The fact that he called my parents was weird, given that I was a legal adult at the time, but it did save me a hard conversation. I kind of just sat there in a daze as they talked. He explained to them who he was, why he was here, and what was happening to me. There was something about paying for the cost of my classes even though I wouldn’t be going to school anymore, part of me got upset hearing that but I was excited about the possibility of what he said next.

“He will immediately be enrolled in my school,” Xavier explained. “The Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters.”   
My mother looked at me. I shrugged and shook my head. “Not sure I have ever heard of that. I didn’t look for schools outside of Michigan, also would I qualify as a youngster?”

Xavier smiled at me. “You are a little older than most of the students that I take in, but as I aim to offer a place to as many young mutants that I can, you will most certainly not be the only older student.”

“I’m...concerned,” my dad said. “He needs to get an education.” Gee, thanks for talking about me like I’m not here dad. “If we are going to send him to New York we need to know that he is at least going to get an education that he can use.”

“I mean, I’m getting an English degree right now,” I said with a small smile. “I’m not getting one I can use now.”

Xavier laughed. “We do offer actual classes.” He looked at my parents. “If you would like I can discuss what we can offer him.” He turned to me. “I am glad that we’ve met, because I believe that I brought the correct member of my team to talk to you more. They are waiting outside.”

My parents asked me if I wanted to talk to this person. Though I was a little hesitant, I was curious about what this guy was offering. Plus, I was a little out of my element when it came to this power stuff. If this person was offering a way for me to learn how to grapple with this, I wanted to take advantage of it. I nodded once. My mother smiled at me, and they told Xavier that they would like to talk to him more. He seemed pretty happy, and offered to buy my parents coffee at the shop down the street. When we exited the office he stopped me and pointed to the parking lot. 

“The person that you should talk to, my boy, is over there,” he said.

“Professor, Hank had a question about his project, it was a bit out of my area of expertise.” A woman of average,or maybe slightly above average height, was walking towards us putting her phone in her pocket. She had a leather jacket over a shirt that had a large X on it and some plain jeans. Her brown hair was in a ponytail. “Oh, is this him?”

“Tom, this is Katherine Pryde,” he said. “She is one of my brightest students.” he gestured to my folks. “Don’t worry, he is in good hands. Shall we?”

I said goodbye to my parents as they went to the coffee shop with the professor. My dad was beginning to talk animatedly with Xavier. I was sure that he would enjoy his time with the Professor. I turned to Katherine. “Um..okay, hi.” God I’m a master of conversation.

She rolled her eyes but was smiling. “Sorry about how awkward that was.” I tried to put on a happy face, but I think it looked more like I was trying to go to the bathroom. “Call me Kitty, by the way, everyone does.” I nodded.   
“Okay, Kitty,” I said. She smiled at me. “So, what are we supposed to do?”

“Geez, you are worse than that Spider kid,” she laughed. She looked around for a second. “I don’t know a thing about this area. We don’t get to the Midwest much.” She sighed. “Is there a park or something?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Uh...follow me.”

We walked in silence for a second. I am not great at conversations with strangers. Thankfully, Kitty seemed like she was used to something like that. “The Professor didn’t tell me what you can do.”

“I...I write pretty well,” I said. “Decent actor. Amateur filmmaker.”

“Filmmaker,” she said happily. “That is interesting.” She laughed. We sat down on a bench. This park was right across from a small private elementary school. There were some kids playing and singing in the playground. A few older people in the park walked around, there was even a guy feeding birds with a loaf of bread. I thought that people only did that in movies. “Also,” Kitty said after a few minutes of silence. “But, you know that’s not what I meant.”

“Riiiiight,” I said, drawing out the word as I thought. I looked at my hands. Fire. Fire. Nothing happened. “Um. Sometimes, I think, I can make fire?”

Kitty smirked at me. “You think?”

“I can’t do it,” I said. I felt my face heating up. “I can’t really do it on command.”

“That’s okay,” Kitty said. “I couldn’t control my powers at first either. That’s one of the things that you learn at the Institute.”

“You have powers?” I asked. Kitty nodded. “What can you…” Kitty had begun to just phase through the bench and into the ground. “Holy hell...that’s so cool!” 

Kitty laughed and phased back up and sat on the bench. “Thanks.” She looked at me like she was trying to figure out. “You have a question?”

“Are you a superhero?” I asked. I shut my mouth really quickly after asking that because I said it like a five year old. “You know Spider-Man?” I stopped talking for a second. Any other stupid questions that you want to ask this person? Kitty snorted as she tried to keep herself from laughing more. I felt my face heating up again and looked at my feet. There was smoke coming off of my shoes. “Oh! Look! I did it!”

Kitty glanced down at my feet. “That’s great, but don’t you think this might not be the best time to set yourself on fire?” I blinked in confusion for a moment before nodding. I closed my eyes and muttered stop under my breath over and over. After a moment I opened my eyes and looked down. My shoes were still smoking, but it didn’t look like there was still a fire going on. I did smell something vaguely close to burning plastic though. Kitty put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nobody is able to control their powers at first. It’s hard for mutants just discovering their abilities.”

“At least yours couldn’t hurt people,” I muttered. 

“I fell out of a lot of cars, through a lot of floors, and ruined more than a few phones,” she said. “You’ll be fine.” She stood up and stretched a little. “There isn’t a better place for you than with us. On top of actually getting an education we help you train to control and use your powers.” She held out her hand to me. “I think it would be safe for you at the institute, probably keep you from accidentally setting something on fire.” 

I took her hand and she pulled me to my feet. The movement in my shoes felt a little weird, I lifted one of my feet off the ground to look at the bottom of my shoe. There were several burn marks on the bottom, along with what looked like a little melting plastic. “Yeah, not sure my old college would appreciate me burning down one of the buildings.”

We walked back to the parking lot where my parents’ car was parked. Kitty and I chatted about random stuff on the way back. She said that she was one of the first kids at the school. She called the group she was a part of the “first class”. She went to the school at the age of sixteen after phasing through the car of a friend and landing in the middle of a busy highway. Going to the Institute helped her control the phasing, so she was able to actually function and not disappear whenever she got a little emotional. Hearing that really made me feel better. The idea of bursting into flame if I ever felt even the smallest twinge of emotion was not a fun one. Even if there were times that it probably would’ve been nice to just set on fire. Probably would end some annoying conversations.

I told Kitty about the passing out in the dorms. She did ask me if there was any other time I could remember where I did anything like that, but I told her that at the moment there wasn’t one that was coming to mind. After that I talked about all the hobbies I had, and by all the hobbies I mean the two or three that I actually kept up with. She was interested in the filmmaking thing that I had mentioned. I had been making short films for a while, and when I got to college finally had access to professional grade equipment and other people who were as interested as I was. I hadn’t been there long though, before the incident. There was a group on campus that made short films and a sketch comedy show that they posted on YouTube and I was supposed to meet with them at the end of the week about joining, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen anymore. 

My parents and the Professor came back pretty shortly after Kitty and I stopped at their car. My parents definitely looked a lot more comfortable than they did when they left. The Professor was laughing at something my mom had just said, and my dad was shaking his head with a smile on his face. 

“Well,” the Professor said as they came to a stop in front of us. “I hope Ms. Pryde answered most of your questions.” I nodded. “Excellent.” He looked at my parents. “And if I understand our conversation correctly, we can look forward to having Thomas at the school by the end of the month?” 

“We think that is for the best,” mom said. She made eye contact with me. I nodded once and flashed a small smile. “ You said that there is assistance regarding tuition?”

“Indeed,” Xavier assured us. “We don’t want to turn away a young person in need because of their financial situation.” He looked at Kitty for a moment before turning back to my parents and I. “In fact, another member of that first collection of students had no money to his name, and we took him in.” 

“As much as he’d let us,” Kitty added. Xavier sighed heavily for a moment. “That one is probably our most...interesting resident.”

Xavier nodded. “That is definitely one way to put it, Ms. Pryde.” He turned to me. “Mr. Tanner, we look forward to seeing you very soon.” He held out a hand. I shook it. Kitty helped him into the car and shut the door. Before she left she wrote her phone number down on a piece of paper and handed it to me. 

“If you have any questions let me know, my email is on there too,” she said. “I think your parents gave us your email so you’ll be getting stuff from us soon. Just asking for some info that we will need. No big deal.” She thought for a moment. “I think Kurt is sending them, so if the spelling and stuff isn’t great, it’s because he’s basically an exchange student.” 

“Okay,” I said softly. This was starting to get a bit overwhelming. They’d just thrown some information about other students and her number. I was moving across the country. I was going to be part of some school for people born with powers. They drove off, in the opposite direction from the airport. That was weird. I got into the back of my parents’ car and we drove back to their house. On the way home they talked about how they thought that the Professor was a very intelligent and helpful man. He gave them some books to read about mutation. They said that he told them that Kitty was one of his best students, and that she graduated from the school and came back to be a teacher because she felt that it was important, especially with the rise in the number of people who were manifesting the X-Gene. Apparently the Professor told them about everyone in the “first class” and they said all of them sounded great, except for one who sounded like he was more trouble than he was worth. 

I didn’t say anything for most of the ride. I kept thinking about the fact that, as of this moment, there was really no going back. For better or worse, I was part of this whole superpower thing. I wasn’t just a fan watching on the news or online. I wasn’t just someone who could buy the merch and watch the interviews. I was part of it. From that moment on, I was part of the biggest change in recent human history. 

I am a mutant.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's move in day.

I dropped out of school the next day. I told my friends that I had some family troubles that I had to take care of, and that I was starting at another school closer to that part of my family. They were sad, but they all had my number so I was able to keep up with them. I hadn’t gotten close enough to my profs just yet to really miss them, so I just told them that I was dropping out for family reasons. 

After we had packed everything up we started the day and a half drive out to New York. On the way there I talked excitedly with my parents. I had exchanged a few texts with Kitty in the intervening days. I have a tendency to be verbose when I text with people, which made it hard communicating with people my age sometimes, but it was nice to talk to someone who had a lot of information to share. She wasn’t quick to respond, I think that she was actually teaching at the school because she often mentioned that she’d tell me when class is over. She told me that I would have a room to myself (I was very excited about that) and that I would join a class of maybe four other people my age. She said that there weren’t many people my age at the school, mostly since mutant powers tended to manifest during the teen years. 

We stopped in front of the gate of a huge Victorian looking house. My dad looked at the GPS and then out the window. “Are we sure this is it?”

I stuck my head out the window. “I think so. Kitty said that it was a big house.” I glanced down the road a bit. “Look! The sign says this is it. Maybe we have to...holy crap!” About half way through my sentence a demon appeared on the hood of the car in a cloud of purple smoke. 

He looked at all of us with his yellow eyes. I noticed that he was wearing a red hoodie over a black t-shirt. “Oh!” he said. He had a heavy German accent. He smiled at us. “Gudentach! My name is Kurt!” 

My mother was the first one who gained the ability to talk first. “Um...um...hello.” 

After a moment the gates opened and Kitty ran out, followed by a short man with a lot of hair and more muscle than I thought someone that side would have, and a woman with purple hair and the build of a ballerina. 

“Kurt! How far was that?” Kitty asked. She had a huge smile on her face, which vanished after a moment when he realized that the person she was talking to was on the hood of a car. “Oh...oh son of a…” she put her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry, we wanted to see how far he could ‘port”

My dad finally found his voice. “That’s...that’s alright,” he looked back at me. “I think we are in the right place.”

We followed the people behind the gate and drove down the sandy road. We drove down the lane and found ourselves in a circle drive and directly in front of the house. The three of us got out of the car. Kurt did a little flip off the front of the car and landed on the ground in front of me. Ms. Pryde told us you were coming.” 

“Um...okay,” I said. I was still trying to get used to Kurt. I could see blue hair all over his body, but his friendly face showed me that he wasn’t actually a demon. I looked at Kitty, who smiled and nodded. My parents were approaching the adults so I looked back at Kurt. I held out my hand. “Tom”

Kurt took it. He had three fingers on his hands. He shook it a few times. “Nice to meet you.” His tail moved back and forth a few times. He smiled at me. “Nice to have someone else who’s not a child here.” 

“How old are you?” I asked. I remembered Kitty saying that someone German was essentially an exchange student. I was really hoping that he was over 18, because meeting someone who wasn’t high school aged right out of the gate would’ve been great.

“Sechzehn,” Kurt answered. 

“Eu não falo,” I responded in Portuguese (I’d taken a few classes in Portuguese because Spanish is too mainstream). 

Kurt tilted his head to the side with a smirk on his face. “Funny. 16.” 

I felt myself starting to frown, and I did my best to keep myself from doing so. I smiled at Kurt instead. There was something about him that told me that Kurt was a little older emotionally or whatever you call that, than he was numerical. “That’s...better than nothing. Are there other students our age?”

Kurt smirked. “A few. I’m guessing that Ms. Pryde told you how big your class is?”

“Kurt!” The short man was standing on the stairs leading into the house. “Bobby wants some help with Piotr and Sarah in the Danger Room.” Kurt looked back at him. “Hey! Elf, why don’t you show the new kid the Danger Room while we move him in.”

“What do they need help with in the Danger Room?” Kurt asked. I looked at him and must have had a very confused look on my face because Kurt smirked. He had an easy smile, it came naturally to his face. I was already getting used to him, he looked like a fun kid. “Sorry, Logan, I don’t think Tom is ready for the Danger Room.”

Logan, who had some crazy sideburns and growled instead of talked, smiled. It didn’t look like it came naturally to him but he looked more approachable all the same. “I guess I understand. At least show him around, maybe introduce him to the other students in his class.”

“Ja,” Kurt responded with a mock salute. Logan rolled his eyes and made his way to the car. He shook hands with my parents and started to talk to them. He gave Kitty another genuine smile. Kurt waited for a few seconds. “Ready to tour?”

“Yeah, I think I am.” The two of us walked up the stairs. The entrance hall really made it clear to me that this place was built by someone with far too much money. The massive central stairway led to the first of a few floors upstairs. “So, where is the actual school?” Kurt grinned and led me behind the stairway.

“The classrooms make up most of the first floor,” he explained as we walked. “It’s Saturday so obviously, no classes.” I nodded. “The kitchen and dining room are back there. Day room on the other side. A ton of stuff to do in the backyard. Tennis, a pool, baseball.” We turned around and made our way up the stairs. I could hear music playing down the halls. It looked like on both the right and the left were halls with essentially dorm rooms. Kurt took a right and then at the end of the hall stopped in front of a door. There was a scanner on the lock, just like back at school...my former college. “Scheisse. You don’t have a card yet.”

“Kurt!” We turned around to see Logan, Kitty, the purple haired person, my parents, and a new person. She was tall with dark skin, bright white hair, and eyes that sparkled with intelligence. Logan was carrying all my baggage, which wasn’t much, besides my guitar which my dad had strapped to his back. Kitty raised an eyebrow at Kurt who just disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke. “Sorry about that. He tries to get upstairs to the college dorms sometimes. Betsy?” The purple haired woman nodded. “Can you help me with the Danger Room?” I looked at Kitty and must have looked scared. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon. Logan and Ororo will show you up stairs.”

My mom said goodbye to Kitty as well and hugged me. “I need to go talk to the professor with your dad.” My dad handed me my guitar. “See you soon.” My parents left down the hall again.

Logan shifted some of my bags. “Well, bub. You ready?”

“I think so,” I answered. 

“Well then,” Ororo said. “Time to meet your classmates.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom meets his fellow classmates,

The door opened and we were immediately nearly hit with some sort of projectile flying through the air. I ducked and turned around to take a look at it. It looked like a sharp spear...made of bone. Logan looked at it and growled, really growled. 

“Sarah! Save it for the Danger Room!” One of the five rooms opened and its occupant poked her head out. She had bright red hair and green eyes. A small crown of bones were poking out of her forehead and one long bone protruded from her elbows. She blinked once and then smiled. 

“Sorry Wolvie!” she said. “Bobby and the big guy kicked me out of the Danger Room and Remy said he could beat me at…” A second door opened and a guy with long straight brown hair stuck his head out of the room. His eyes were a bright purple.

“I didn’t say anything like that, cherie,” he said. He looked at me. “Hi! I’m Remy.” Before I could say anything a third door opened and a short young woman with long brown hair and intense green eyes walked out. 

“I am trying to study, could you all…” she paused for a second. She looked at me and I could tell that she was taking stock of everything about me. After a moment she looked at Logan. “Logan.”

“Laura,” Logan answered. “Could you remember to talk to your sister today? I think that she did something to that Triage kid.”

“Christopher Muse,” Laura said. “I will talk to Gabby.”

Ororo walked past me to the final room in the hall. It was on the left side of the hall, the same side as Sarah and Laura but was across from the window and not another room. Logan grunted and motioned for me to follow. The other students really seemed to take Ororo’s movement as a sign that introductions will really start later and returned to their rooms, except for Laura who silently walked downstairs. 

The room itself was bigger than my previous dorm room and already had a nice desk and chair in it. The window was nicely sized and looked over the lawn out towards the road. I could see my parents and the professor on the porch talking to the Professor and another new face. My head was spinning to struggle to keep track of all the new people I was meeting. This man was very tall and more built than anyone I’d ever seen. 

“These are the rooms for college aged students, as I’m sure you’ve guessed,” Ororo said. I jumped when she spoke. Her voice was soft but carried more authority than any of the people I’d met so far aside from Xavier himself. “The younger students aren’t allowed up here except if they are invited. Laura’s sister occasionally comes up here but other than that most stay on the lower floors. You’ll start scheduling your classes tomorrow with the other University Level students, Professor Xavier will assist you. Any questions?”

“Um...when’s dinner?” I asked. I heard Remy laugh from across the hall and felt my face heat up. I took a few deep breaths. I didn’t want to start a fire on my first day, not even my first day. 

Ororo smiled. “Dinner starts at 6 and you can get it from then till 8. You are always welcome to make something at any time.” 

I nodded. “I think that’s everything for now.”

“Great,” Logan grunted. He tossed my stuff onto the floor and left the room. I must have had some sort of look on my face because Ororo told me that he takes a long time to warm up to people but is worth getting to know. I thanked her for her help and she left the room as well, saying that she had to go help someone with something. 

I looked around the room again. It was hard to think that this was going to be mine for...I didn’t know how long. With the age difference between a lot of the people that I had seen there wasn’t an indication that people ever even left.

I started to unpack everything and set up my room. My parents stopped in after a while to say goodbye. We hugged, and for the second time in only a few months they left me in a small room. It didn’t take me nearly as long to set up everything in this room as it did at the state school. Without a roommate I was free to spread out. Once everything was put away and set up like I wanted (plus a TV that I couldn’t fit in my room at college) I sat down on the bed and tried to take everything in. 

I was a mutant, now at a school for mutants? There were a few other people my age, and two of them were visibly different from normies. Laura looked normal though. I wondered what her mutation was. I looked at my hands. After taking a few breaths I opened up one hand. Without a sound a small flame appeared in my hand. 

“Huh,” I muttered. “I wonder what…” I reached my pointer finger to the center of my palm and stretched it out again. The flame stayed on the tip of my finger. I smiled. “Okay...let’s see what else.” I started to juggle it between my fingers. 

“That is interesting.” I jumped and clenched my fists. The fire went out. The long haired brunette woman was leaning against my door frame...Laura that was her name. “I wondered why you smelled like smoke.” 

I took a second to process that. “Why I...smelled...what?” 

Laura stood up straight (she was still only like five foot one at most), her green eyes not moving from mine. I looked away. “You smell like smoke.” She didn’t seem to understand why that would sound weird. I raised an eyebrow. After a second she tilted her head to one side. “Ah, my apologies. I have forgotten what to say again.” She shook her head for a moment and then ran a hand through her hair. “My senses are much more acute than the normal human.” She tapped her nose. “I could smell the fire.”

“Oh,” I said before I could really process what she was saying. “Wow, with all the teenagers here, that must be annoying.” Her expression didn’t change at all.

“Incredibly. I can smell them all the time. I have no idea how you went to a public high school.” She moved silently through the room and took a seat on my desk chair. When I stared at her she took another moment. “Again. I am sorry. May I come in?”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” I said. I figured she’d leave if I asked her too, but nobody had been around for a couple hours and I wanted to talk to someone, even if it seemed like they didn’t really understand how to talk to people. It was a relief, honestly, because usually I felt like I never understood how to interact with other people. “Um, how is your sister?”

“Why?” Laura asked harshly. She had narrowed her eyes like she was trying to figure out something about me. 

“I...I don’t know,” I admitted. “I was making small talk? Logan asked you to do something with her earlier.”

“Oh, right,” she said. ‘She is doing well. She got into an argument with another student and almost attacked him with her claws.” My mouth fell open. Laura looked at me, and then for the first time she smiled. It didn’t look like she smiled much, but this was the first time that I noticed her eyes light up. “Of course, you are new. So you must want to know everyone’s mutations.”

“Well, yeah,” I agreed. “I figured it would be like at college when you ask everyone what their major is.” She didn’t indicate if she understood what I was talking about or not. Instead she raised up one fist. With a sharp metallic sound two metal claws popped out of the spaces between two knuckles. “Holy shit…”

“I am also able to heal quickly, but I have been told I do not need to demonstrate that,” she explained clinically, like there weren’t claws sticking out of her hand. 

“Yeah, I believe you,” I said. She retracted the claws. “Do a lot of people here have more than one power?”

“I do not know the answer to that,” Laura answered. “Everyone is different.” Laura looked at the clock that I had on my desk. “It is time for dinner.”


End file.
